6 Daring Assassination Plots (Carried Out by Morons)

In the movies, assassins are usually smooth, well-trained experts armed with high-end sniper rifles and grappling hooks. In real life ... yeah, not so much. In general, criminals tend to be morons, even criminals who aspire to do things like take out a world leader. That's why most of the world's assassination attempts turn into Mister-Bean-esque slapdick clusterfucks. Such as ...

#6. Abdullah al-Asiri and the Asshole Bomb

There's nothing funny about a suicide bombing. Unless, we would argue, the bomber had the device wedged up his ass, and only succeeded in exploding himself.

That brings us to al-Qaida member and aspiring cartoon character Abdullah al-Asiri, who decided to kill Muhammad Bin Nayef, the Saudi Minister for Security Affairs and the man responsible for fighting terrorism throughout Saudi Arabia. Now, a target like that would certainly be surrounded by security, and security tends to check for things like suicide vests (hey, they watch Homeland). So, in a plan his friends probably came up with at three in the morning while doodling on a napkin, al-Asiri would attempt to take out Bin Nayef with a bomb crammed into his rectum.

mark wragg/iStock/Getty ImagesDamn near killed him.

Al-Asiri's first step was to pretend he was leaving his terrorist ways behind him and ask for a face-to-face meeting with Bin Nayef. Then he would walk into Bin Nayef's office, shake his hand, press a radio detonator, and unleash the mother of all farts. And to be fair, everything went perfectly -- al-Asiri showed up and went through all the security checkpoints without any sort of problem (yes, there are some places no guard wants to go). He met Bin Nayef, shook his hand, and then, in the words of Bin Nayef himself, "he surprised me by blowing himself up."

The problem was that it really is hard to know exactly how much anus bomb you need in order to detonate a room (there isn't a Mythbusters episode about it ... yet). At the end of the day, they probably were constrained more by the physical limits of the average human butthole than anything else -- it turned out that an asshole can't hold enough explosives to do the job. Al-Asiri's abdominal cavity absorbed all the force of the blast, so Bin Nayef merely got splattered with little bits of terrorist as the man he'd just shook hands with popped like a balloon right in front of him.

#5. Oktai Enimehmedov Fails from Six Inches Away

You might have seen this utterly insane fucking video of a man rushing a politician on live TV and pointing a gun at his head, only to have absolutely nothing happen:

Well, the backstory is actually quite a bit more ridiculous than even that video would imply.

Chances are you have never heard of Ahmed Dogan, the chairman of the Bulgarian Movement For Rights and Freedoms Party. Chances are you will never see him on Cracked again. What's important is that on January 19, 2013, someone tried to kill him.

The would-be assassin was a petty criminal named Oktai Enimehmedov, and his problem was that he couldn't buy a real gun -- not every country is like America in that regard. So he substituted by buying something called a gas pistol. It's like a handgun, but fires pellets filled with tear gas instead of bullets. Literally the only way you could kill someone with it is if you shot them in the eye at point-blank range. So this meant he had to get close. Extremely close. Jump Dogan in a back alleyway? Nope. Attack him as he answered his front door? Not a chance. Instead, he chose to run up on stage while Dogan was giving a speech to a large audience on live television.

And it fucking worked.

He got past everyone. He ran right up, stuck the gun right in Dogan's face, literally inches from his eyeball, pulled the trigger, and then ...

A judge sentenced him to only three and a half years in prison, because it was such a bad effort that prosecutors couldn't even make a charge of attempted murder stick.

And yet, somehow, this was only the second dumbest choice of murder weapon on this list ...

#4. Michael Stone Shops at the Same Store as Wile E. Coyote

AFP/Getty Images

Michael Stone wasn't some inexperienced novice when it came to killing -- he had already carried out multiple attacks in Ireland on behalf of a Loyalist terrorist group, for which he was sentenced to 684 years in prison. He served only nine of those years before being released as part of a peace agreement, and took up a new career as a painter. That is, until 2006, when he decided to get back to what he was good at. And what better way to start a new war than by killing Irish separatist leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness? And do it right in the middle of the Parliament Buildings of Northern Ireland?

But as Mr. Enimehmedov above taught us, a successful assassination is all about choosing the right weapon. To this end, Stone decided to go for pure volume: He went to kill two of the most visible politicians in Northern Ireland armed with seven pipe bombs, a larger bomb made from a butane gas canister, three knives, a strangling noose, a tomahawk, and a stage pistol. A friggin' stage pistol. As in, a fake gun that can't fire bullets.

Stone started his attack by spray painting "Sinn Fein/IRA mur" on the outside of the Parliament Buildings, because all good assassinations require stealth and therefore begin with unfinished political graffiti. Then he charged straight in, lit his gas canister bomb, and tossed it down the main hallway. It didn't explode.

He then pointed his fake gun at the police officers guarding the entrance, and they proceeded to chase him down and trap him inside the building's revolving doors.

AFP/Getty ImagesSmooth.

They closed his arm in the door, wrestled away his (fake) gun, put him in an arm bar, and took him down to the ground.

That's not all. Three weeks later, his lawyer stood up in Her Majesty's Courtroom and claimed that what Stone did was not the most pathetic midlife crisis assassination attempt the world has ever seen, but that, "It was, in fact, a piece of performance art replicating a terrorist attack." Which might have been vaguely believable if you ignore how his client had eight actual bombs. And he was caught in the act of throwing them at people.

AFP/Getty Images"Which clearly represents the plight of the middle class."

How can you get dumber than that? Well, he could have blown himself up, as in the case of ...